It won't fray

Hotsurenai

Uniqlo consists of anywhere from 50 to 100% of what I'm wearing at any given moment, especially in winter. I've had a love affair with Heat Tech thermal underwear for at least the past seven or eight years. I live in it. I wear it to work, and when I get home from work, I take off my sweater and pants and throw on a fleece top over the long sleeved T and leggings, and sleep in it. I get up in the morning and throw on my windbreaker and go running (full disclosure: this happens much, much less frequently than it should).

Sometimes, though, I want to stay warm while wearing 3/4 length sleeves, and the short sleeved Heat Tech scoop neck just isn't going to hack it. Plus, the long sleeves poke out of the cuffs of my altered Uniqlo dress shirt.

So today, I altered the sleeves of my long sleeved Heat Tech scoop neck.

I cut off the extra length of sleeves.

In a perfect world, I would be filthy rich and could afford to buy and have space for a serger. But the world is imperfect. So, I folded the cuffs over twice, and stitched them down at four points with hand stitching (I could have used a sewing machine, but with only about eight points to sew a small number of stitches, I decided it was too much trouble to drag it out of the closet).

I wore it to a party under a dress with 3/4 length sleeves. It worked just fine. It has gone though the wash twice, and so far, there are no signs of visible fraying.

I've also read on a blog that you can cut the neckline open for plunging V-necks and off-the-shoulder tops, but I haven't seen any crash testing done on those, nor have I done it myself.

First wool coat in a long time

Hisashiburi no uuru no kooto

Here’s another shirt I shortened the sleeves on. I bought it a few years ago at a thrift shop. I own a few shirts from this brand I bought new (mostly on sale), and it would have been well over 10,000 yen full price. This one had blouse style cuffs. 

The slit backings were a single strip of fabric. The backing was just stitched straight on the slit. 

I shortened the sleeves 4 cm, so I extended the slit 4 cm. Because of the blouse style cuff, the top of the slit didn’t have a v shaped cut. Since there were fewer moving parts, there was a smaller room for error, so it turned out better than the white button up shirt. 

I also shortened the sleeves of a tweed Uniqlo coat. This is my first wool coat in over ten years. I chose this one because of its timeless design and simple, easy-to-alter sleeves. 

What I really wanted was a tailored camel coat, but the only tailored camel coat they have at Uniqlo this season has actual cuffs that button open and closed. Which is awesome, but really difficult to alter nicely so that the buttons and the opening can be salvaged. 

BTW, coats that button open and closed at the cuff are a throwback to the days when doctors made house calls. Patients' homes would be poorly heated in winter, so the doctor would do his (they were all male back then) work wearing his coat with the sleeves rolled up.)  

I ripped the lining from the cuff and turned the sleeve inside out. The cuff had interfacing fused to it, so I peeled it off, shortened the sleeve (about 5 cm), and fused the original facing back on. Then I stitched the (also shortened) lining on the new cuff line. 

I realized after I'd finished one sleeve that I'd bought a book on how to sew your own coat a couple of years back, hoping it would help my alterations. By the time I remembered this, I was so far along that I decided I might as well finish both sleeves the same way so they'd be symmetric. Maybe I'll have the chance to sew my own coat or alter another sleeve one of these days, and the book will be put to good use.

And yes, they ended up crooked, but since the lining is stitched to the cuff inside the sleeve, this time, no one will ever notice. Unless you turn the cuff inside out and look carefully. Which I will let you do if you ask me nicely.

Shortening shirt sleeves

Shatsu no sodetake wo tsumeru

This is an alteration I’d been thinking of doing for some time. I bought a book about shirt alterations ages ago, but I didn’t do anything after reading it. 

When you google “shortening sleeves,” you get info on ripping off the cuff, cutting the sleeve, and stitching the cuff back in place. This is very simple, but it means the sleeve slit will become shorter, making it harder to roll up sleeves. Plus, shirts look nicer with a full length slit.

Behold, the two-year-old white Uniqlo wrinkle-resistant button-up shirt. The sleeves are about 4 cm too long, but it’s a comfy, practical white shirt, so I’ve worn it at least once a week for the entire time I’ve had it. It’s probably due to be replaced, but I decided to do the alterations anyway, as practice, wear it some more, and then buy a new white shirt ;)

If I do the “rip out cuff, cut off sleeve, stitch back together” thing, I’ll land just below the buttonhole on the slit, which would look kind of wrong.

Before doing anything else, I stole a pencil from the Pumpkin Prince’s school pencil case and marked the cuff and slit backings “R” or “L.” Then I ripped the stitches out of the cuff and the slit backings. I had to rip off the button on the slit, but not the cuff.

Then I marked 4 cm above the cuff stitches as the sew line, and 1.5 cm (seam allowance) below that as the cut line. 

 I extended the slit 4 cm, and imitated the V-shaped slit at the top as well as I could.

I then basted the inside slit backing to the seam on the extended slit, and machine stitched it to the sleeve. I made sure the free edge was on the right side (outside) of the sleeve (this took about three tries to get right, but wrinkle-resistant cotton is forgiving). Then I stitched across the top edge of the slit.

 Then, I basted the outside slit backing to the seam, making sure to cover the free edge of the inside slit backing with the triangular edge. Then, again, machine stitching.

(I forgot to take pictures of this part, but this is the same as a lot of other online tutorials, so you can ask Prof. Google for help) I basted the inside of the cuff to the sleeve. The sleeve was, of course, slightly wider at the new seam, so I ended up making wider tucks than the original sleeve to fit the cuff. Then I machine stitched the inside of the cuff to the sleeve, basted the outside cuff to the whole thing, and added top stitching to the outside of the cuff.

Like all my alterations, slightly crooked, but most of the time, “slightly crooked but right length” looks better than “perfectly straight but too long/ wide.”